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SPOILER INFO
This fanfic novel is largely based on the events that occurred in an actual game of Skyrim I played. Therefore, it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous day
4-201-09-10 03:51
Frostfruit Inn, Roriksted, Whiterun, Skyrim
As we're getting dressed, I give Lydia a sign to hurry up and then we go to the bathroom ahead of Jenassa and Rayya. I ask Lydia to tell me more about that shopkeeper and Rayya yesterday. Lydia says she wasn't seriously hooking her up. Well, not so directly. She had just noticed that Rayya was really shy around men, so she thought she'd try and help her a little. As to why Jormun – well, they simply ended up hanging around at his shop because he's a really witty and intelligent man once you get him talking.
Having let her tell me all that, I gently drop the bombshell: Rayya was shy because her period had ended only yesterday afternoon. Lydia is like "oh, I had no idea," and says she'll apologize to her later. "No, you don't have to," I tell her. "Maybe she won't be too happy learning that I told you."
I can practically see the question on Lydia's face: "Why did she tell you and didn't tell me?" With just a hint of a smile, I pretend not to notice anything. "But she is really shy and could use some friendly advice," I say instead. "And maybe to be kept an eye on."
Lydia nods, understanding what I mean: so that Rayya who's had only one partner so far won't end up with some sly talker who would treat her badly. Lydia knows a lot more about men than she or I.
The sun hasn't yet risen when we head northwest, the four of us. It's quite dark. The starlit sky looks magnificent. It's a phenomenal feeling to stand there in as good as uninhabited country:
The sun rises slowly. We avoid any structures we notice. By the time we arrive at the edge of a mountainous plateau, visibility has become pretty good. We need to descend in order to reach a bridge to get across the river. On this kind of terrain, you can't just swim over where you like.
We've crossed the bridge now. Our destination is in the west, but I'm not sure if there's a way to get through in that direction, so we follow the road to the south-southwest. I'm surprised meeting a small boy. What are you doing here, child? He ignores me. Around the next bend, we see a village.
Jenassa says it must be Karthwasten and she somehow thought it would be much farther south.
There's a gathering on the village square. It seems some thugs have occupied a nearby mine, ostensibly to keep it safe from Forsworn attacks (the Forsworns are local rebels; I shall call them "forns" for short), but their real goal is to intimidate the owner Ainethach into selling the mine to a powerful clan of Silver-Blood.
I remember I've seen someone named Silver-Blood in Granite Hall. Ainethach tells me their actual power base is Morpork, formerly called Markarth after the Karth river. Silver-Bloods rule that city with an iron hand and even the jarl is powerless to do anything about it.
While we talk, the rough-looking strangers walk away, evidently to settle down in the mine. Ainethach asks if we could somehow help driving them out of the mine. Yeah, we can at least go and have a word with them.
The thugs are patrolling the mine diligently. They tell us it's closed and we'd better go away, but they don't look too hostile – rather the opposite, if I may say so. I approach their leader, a tall and strong man named Atar. When I ask him to leave and let the villagers go on with their work, he agrees surprisingly easily. I have the feeling he wants to ingratiate himself with us. Frankly, we wouldn't mind. Those men are really good-looking. But they don't seem to know what to say, and we can't outright propose, can we? So they just walk away awkwardly.
If this went so smoothly, then it would seem the Silver-Bloods are not all that powerful, at least not in this part of The Reach. Atar's gang is evidently independent, working with the Silver-Bloods on contractual basis. Well, it's none of our business really. Having told Ainethach he can send his workers back into the mine, we waste no time moving on.
To remind you, we will be looking for a site, probably a Dwemer ruin, where we should find an aetherium shard, similar to the one we got from Arkngthamz. As I told you, I have a map from that ghost Katria's journal, and I have a not awfully exact map of Skyrim. I compared the two as carefully as I could and marked an approximate location on the map where to start searching. But it's merely a rough estimate.
On our way to the west, we are rewarded with a stunning, I mean really most amazingly stunning view.
I'm dazzled.
Talk about standing on top of the world!
Even I can't descend THAT.
No matter how amazing the sights may be, one of us must always stay a little behind to watch the backs of the other three.
I would never allow the four of us to stand on the edge of a cliff at the same time.
I would never allow the four of us to stand on the edge of a cliff at the same time.
We turn back and find a safe path down. We encounter a dog and a dragon. The dragon we kill. The dog helps us within his abilities with the killing of the dragon. After that, he decides to tag along with us. That's fine with me, as long as he's not going to annoy me with incessant barking. He hasn't so far. And he's so smart he can even understand some commands.
What I'm a lot more happy with, though, is this lovely shot of Lydia:
Knowing that this region is dangerous – as well as completely unfamiliar to us – we proceed with caution. But nothing further happens until we see a Dwemer ruin. That turns out to be Bthardamz. According to Katria's journal, it's not the place we need. She has written that the right place is north or northwest from it. Indeed, not far in the north-northwest we see a structure called Deep Folk Crossing. It has a most amazing construction of obviously Dwemer origin, with some metallic moving things above the fast-flowing river. I can't even begin to guess what it's doing and what for.
[series of 2 pictures you can click through; click on the first picture to make it big, then press the right arrow to see the next picture etc.; press Esc to return to the text]
In case you don't know it yet – the Dwemers are a long-extinct civilization that had superb mastery of technology and magic. They used it to build elaborate machinery, much of which is still working, fulfilling purposes that are beyond the people of today. Some philosophers suggest that their fixation on technology is what caused the downfall of the Dwemers, but I fail to see how it could have.
This is a map of the region. The blue marker is where I estimated Deep Folk Crossing to be,
and the pink dot, our current location, is where it actually is. I'm quite proud of myself.
and the pink dot, our current location, is where it actually is. I'm quite proud of myself.
Easy as it may have been to find the place, our search for the aetherium shard is long and very frustrating. I'm annoyed with Katria. I had taken it for granted that she'd be here to help us search. We finally find the damned thing "hidden" in plain view in the most obvious place. Now Katria deigns to make her appearance. She says: "Hmph. Beat me to it, this time." After "see you soon", she vanishes into thin air again.
Glad that the job's done, but not too happy with my performance, I set course for nearby Dragontooth Crater (black marker northwest of Karthwasten on the above map). After a while, I begin to think that maybe Katria had found the shard, but she couldn't physically pick it up, because she's a ghost. So she waited for me to appear. Maybe she wanted to give me the credit for finding it to boost my self-esteem. It was kind of her to do that, actually. [Smiling.]
Dragontooth Crater is a place where we're supposed to find a magical item called Forgemaster's Fingers. We've been told that if we bring it to the Orcs in Dushnikh Yal, it would make us Orc-friends (or "blood-kin" as they call it) and we would then be allowed to enter all the Orc villages in Skyrim. I told you I'm not too keen on going to Orc villages, but since we're already in this region, we might just as well get the thing. We'll probably have to kill a dungeonful of disgusting creatures, but that's how it is when you're an adventurer in Skyrim. Come to think of it, if enemies were nicer, killing them might get too hard on my conscience.
Busy with all this mental blabbing, I almost yelp when I suddenly find myself amongst bones and corpses, and something I'm not sure if I should call it a structure or a ruin. This is Dragontooth Crater. "Tooth", not "teeth". The dragonteeth can probably be found in the mouth of that dragon who is flying above us. He sounds like he has something against us. Look, we already had one dragon today! Give us a break, will you? No, he won't.
This is a very weak dragon, but I still get a dragonsoul. Maybe I'll find a use for all those dragonsouls someday.
Now I can look around undisturbed. Opposite that structure or ruin is a word wall with yet another dragon shout. After I've absorbed it, I find that Forgemaster's Fingers thing in a nearby chest. That's all there is to it. No dungeon.
Jenassa's turn to pose with a dead dragon.
By the way, that large blotch that looks like ejaculate of a very big snowtroll
(no, like a squashed icewraith, says Lydia)
is in fact a trace of frost magic cast at the dragon by someone.
By the way, that large blotch that looks like ejaculate of a very big snowtroll
(no, like a squashed icewraith, says Lydia)
is in fact a trace of frost magic cast at the dragon by someone.
It's not very late yet. In my estimate, we have plenty of time to reach Dragonbridge in daylight. Then we can decide if we want to do a few quests in that region or head straight for The Pale to find Kharjo.
Or our way northeast, we enjoy a swim across a river, as there's no bridge. Then we're attacked by a forn whom I kill without much difficulty. Nearby is a camp with a strange name Bruca's Leap Redoubt. Inside is someone hostile. We go in and kill him. It was actually unnecessary. We were in no danger. We could have just walked away. But it's too late now. A human being is dead and I can't bring him back to life. :-(
Further northeast we discover a Coldwind Mine which is impossible to enter, and then I run into a bear. Strangely enough, this bear is as hard to kill as was that last dragon. I'm not being witty, this bear and that dragon really took about the same effort to kill. What's going on with the world?
After a little walk in the sunny forest, we're in Dragonbridge. It's past 3 in the afternoon. Northwest of here, there are two places for us to explore. First, Pinemoon Cave where Sybille, the court wizard of Solitud, wants a gang of vampires destroyed. Second, a cave from which I'm supposed to retrieve a valuable helmet for the beggar Noster in Solitud. From there, we would proceed to the northeast, to the wreck of The Burning Queen, find a valuable sword for Alday of Dånstar, and then go to Solitud. It's too late to do any of that today, so we'll just spend the rest of the afternoon crafting and maybe have some sex later if we can find good men, and be on our way early tomorrow morning.
Then my eye fallse onto the sign of the shop of that weird alchemist, Athragar. Spending half a day in Dragonbridge, how can I avoid encountering him?
"Girls, I've changed my mind," I suddenly hear myself say. "I don't want to sit here the whole afternoon."
We'll go to that vampire nest right now (the red arrow on the map below) and return to Dragonbridge for the night (the green arrow). Tomorrow we'll go to the Wolfskull Cave in the north which I had first thought of skipping this time (pink arrow), and then to The Burning Queen (beyond the edge of the map; blue arrow). We'll leave Noster's helmet (beyond the edge of the map in the west-northwest) for another time. The place is too far in a wrong direction and difficult to access.
The yellow star shows our current location (village of Dragonbridge).
The road northeast (branching from the pink arrow) ends up in Solitud.
The road northeast (branching from the pink arrow) ends up in Solitud.
So we get going without delay. To the west of Dragonbridge are high mountains, which is why we have to follow the road to the north first. Then we spend considerable time looking for the path across the mountains which the map suggests has to be there.
Finally, we're through. There's a beautiful lake. We find the cave west-southwest of it without difficulties. Some places inside have weird strong light which makes it impossible to see properly, but the rest is pretty easy.
Note the two magical ice arrows, one flying from a follower of mine beyond the edge of the picture (she's using a Staff of Ice Spikes)
towards the enemy, and the other one in the opposite direction, generated by some kind of a spell the enemy has cast.
I am using a physical (albeit enchanted) bow.
towards the enemy, and the other one in the opposite direction, generated by some kind of a spell the enemy has cast.
I am using a physical (albeit enchanted) bow.
Then we return to Dragonbridge. I thought I'd do the smithing in the evening, but I'm so exhausted that I go to sleep right away, even though it's not even 8 o'clock yet. My followers are free to amuse themselves, as long as they'll be rested and ready tomorrow morning.
next awakening
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